"Living things have a kind of glow around them, like a halo. Living happy things glow in one color; living sad things in another color. Living intelligent things in still another color, living innocent things in yet another. There was no name for any of the hundreds of colors and shades in which living things glowed. They were not colors that could have been seen by the eyes of whoever it was that had made up the names of the colors. The boy did not feel he had to make up names for them; he had no one with whom to talk about them except himself, and he would know what he meant without the names. But dead things, especially dead things that have lately been alive, look awful. They're all gray and empty. Their glow fades slowly—as slowly as a mimosa leaf closes when it reluctantly decides that the sun is going down. Then after the glow is weak and gray for a while it disappears, leaving behind a disgusting lump that is not much besides a disorderly mess of chemicals. There is nothing else like it. No metaphor, no analogy. Just nothing, where there had been something that once glowed."